Should Ohio cut pay-to-participate fees?

COLUMBUS – Barbara Stephenson worries her grandson won’t be able to play football when he reaches high school.

She’s concerned not because her grandson isn’t good enough or isn’t enthusiastic about the sport, but because she can’t afford the higher participation fee.

“I’m not going to be able to afford it,” Stephenson said. “There’s just no way. So he’s going to have to find odd jobs and work his way through. That’s the only way we can.”

West Muskingum Local Schools, where Stephenson’s two grandsons attend middle school and play sports, is the only school district in Muskingum County to charge pay-to-participate fees. The fee is $100 per sport for middle school students and $250 per sport for high school students. There’s a $1,000 cap for families at the high school level.

Superintendent William Harbron said school officials will adjust fees based on what families can afford and scholarships are offered. Still, he said the fees are necessary to keep athletics running in the district.

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted and Sen. Cliff Hite, both former football players, want that to change. The Republican officials want to ax pay-to-participate fees at schools statewide, saying the money bars children from low- and middle-income families from playing music, participating in sports and joining clubs.

Husted was inspired to tackle pay-to-participate fees after reading “Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis” by Port Clinton native Robert Putnam. The book chronicles barriers children face to finding jobs and living successful lives, including the reduction in extracurricular activities.

Husted said he wasn’t the best student, but he excelled in sports, and that motivated him to do well in both settings.

“It was athletics that kept me involved in academics,” Husted said. “We wouldn’t think of charging for biology class. We shouldn’t charge to play the game of football.”

Hite, R-Findlay, also knows the benefits of athletics and music firsthand. His father taught music, and Hite played football at Findlay High School.

“If I had had to pay, I would have liked to think that my mom and dad would have come up with the money, but I don’t know,” Hite said. Later, as a football coach, Hite recalls watching how participation fees decimated opponents’ programs.

Who pays?

School administrators, coaches and lawmakers largely agree eliminating fees on extracurricular activities is a great idea. But who will foot the bill?

Husted wouldn’t say whether lawmakers would chip in money to cover costs or whether the school districts would be on the hook to find new money. He just knows pay-to-participate fees hurt children and need to be removed.

“In the end, that’s what needs to stop,” Husted said. “There are dozens of ways to go about doing that. I’m open to them all.”

Most school officials don’t want to charge students fees to participate in athletics, but they must pay for academics first, said Damon Asbury, director of legislative services for the Ohio School Boards Association.

“It is just like anything else: More schools are searching for dollars to fund them,” OHSAA spokesman Tim Stried said. “The assumption is that it will continue to rise.”

Fees vary from school to school. Athletes in northeast Ohio paid the most, with an average fee of $153, and those in southeast Ohio paid the least, with an average fee of $66, according to the survey.

“Sometimes, hard choices have to be made,” said Asbury, a former superintendent whose district had fees to participate in sports. “Were it not for pay-to-play revenues, they might not be able to offer the full range of sports that they do.”

Local fees

Locally, some high schools charge a fee, while others do not.

Newark used to charge a $200 per athlete, per sport fee. It stopped four years ago.

Granville charges no fee, while Licking Heights charges $100 per athlete, per sport. Licking Heights implemented the fee after a levy failure.

Watkins Memorial charges $211 per athlete, per sport, with a family cap of $750.

It charged $235 until the school board voted to reduce the fee prior to the current school year. The reduction also applied to the middle school (Watkins Middle School reduced its fee from $110 per athlete, per sport to $99. The high school marching band similarly reduced its fee by 10 percent).

Southwest Licking Local Schools Superintendent Robert Jennell pushed for the change at Watkins Memorial after voters in May renewed the district’s emergency operating levy. Jennell and the district had pledged to reduce the fees by 10 percent if voters approved the levy.

The district charges pay-to-participate fees, Jennell said, to offset the cost of running athletic programs. Aside from hiring coaches, officials and an athletic director, the district must cover utility and transportation costs, among other expenses.

“We receive some state funding for academics and busing, but they do not fund us for athletics,” Jennell said. “That is a 100-percent-locally-funded initiative.”

Licking Heights Superintendent Philip Wagner agreed. Aside from charging $100 per high school athlete, per sport, Licking Heights charges $75 per middle school athlete, per sport.

“We use it primarily to cover the coaches salaries, but it still doesn’t cover all the costs,” Wagner said.

Prior to hiring Jennell in 2012, the Southwest Licking Board of Education implemented a policy whereby it capped the district’s annual contribution to athletic and band activities at 1 percent of the overall budget.

The decision, Jennell said, was tied to directing as much money as possible into academic-related programs.

“The local tax dollars are very tough to increase, so people here are trying to do more with less,” Jennell said. “They don’t want to go back to the voters (asking for more money).”

The district’s athletic and band boosters help defray some expenses, Jennell said. The district also attempts to work with families who are struggling financially and cannot afford the per-sport fee.

Wagner said there are organizations at Licking Heights that attempt to do the same.

Both Wagner and Jennell said they would like to find ways to further reduce the fees.

Wagner added he has been following the conversation at the state level involving Husted and others.

“The pay-to-participate fees are a way to help school districts offset the cost of extra-curricular activities,” he said. “If we don’t have the revenue streams any more, it’s going to result in a (financial) liability. It would be another unfunded (state) mandate, and it could go back to the community to fund.”

Making it work without fees

Bucyrus City Schools used to charge pay-to-participate fees but the school board nixed them in recent years, Superintendent Kevin Kimmel said. The fee was $60 per sport up to $240 per school year to participate in extracurricular programs.

“We don’t want to turn any kids away because of the financial condition they are in,” Kimmel said. “(Activities) help develop a well-rounded student.”

Now, athletics are paid for with income from tickets, extra money from golf and cross country invitationals sponsored by local civic organizations and general revenue money, which goes toward salaries and some transportation. Parents pay for athletic shoes, traveling to watch the game and other expenses.

“From our standpoint, we would like to limit the expenses our families have to pay,” Kimmel said.

Still, Kimmel would like the decision to charge pay-to-participate fees to be a local one — not simply eliminated by state lawmakers.

Hite is hosting meetings in Findlay, Cleveland and Dayton to listen to school officials, students and others affected by pay-to-participate fees. Feedback from the meetings could lead to legislation to cut or reduce fees statewide.

Any change would need money to replace what’s lost in fees, Pickerington Local Schools Treasurer Timothy Jenkins said at Hite’s first meeting in Columbus.

“We are on tight budgets and folks in the community don’t always believe that their property taxes should go up when their kids don’t necessarily participate,” Jenkins said.